Why B-school women should start thinking now about board membership

It’s no secret that gender diversity in corporate board rooms is lacking. Did you know only 22 percent of Fortune 500 board members are women? That’s why women in B-school should start thinking about corporate board membership now — early or midway through their careers.

According to Bloomberg News, July 2019 marked the first point in time when all S&P 500 companies had at least one female director.

Fast-forward one month, to August of 2019, and it became clear once again just how far corporations still have to go. That month, WeWork filed an IPO without a single female director listed.

And while WeWork has since delayed its IPO rollout proceedings – and added a female board member in response to criticism – women are still in board limbo. 

Research is mixed on whether corporate board diversification drives positive shareholder returns. Studies have found either positive results or no change. Uncontested is the reality that boards lack diversity across age, race, sex and gender. Perspectives on the value of diversity in the boardroom also remain outdated. 

When contacted in 2018 by the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock, a few large U.S. companies had the following to say about why their boards lack women:

• “There aren’t any qualified women.”
• “We’re not a consumer-facing company.”
• “We don’t need a woman director.” 

Solutions for increasing the number of women in corporate board positions typically include:

• Fix the women-in-leadership pipeline problem (not enough women in leadership roles altogether)
• Grow career mentorship (from both men and women)
• Increase candidate advocacy (by both men and women)
• Diversify professional networks (many board seats are filled through personal network connections)
• Drop the requirement that board members must be a former CEO (a low number of women in CEO positions immediately decreases the women candidacy pool)
• Drop the requirement that board members have previous board experience (a low number of women on boards today begets a low future number)

There is no one solution to the problem. But as future corporate leaders, women in B-school can start thinking about their role now.

Women, as you craft your post-MBA career strategy, why not add a future board position to your list of career aspirations and targets? Successful board members come from a variety of backgrounds: entrepreneurs, directors, chairs, controlling shareholders and senior institutional investors are among them.  

Ready to add "board membership" to your career plan? Learn about the basic qualifications and steps to board leadership by visiting Forté Foundation’s Women on Boards initiative.

– By Miranda Taylor, 2020 MBA candidate. Taylor is originally from Minneapolis, and worked as a science writer and digital content strategist in the health industry before coming to Maryland Smith to pursue an MBA.

Photo credit: CoWomen via Unsplash